


Our own private wars

by tyrantmoves



Series: Never really was a Jedi [1]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ashoka's "Between" Years, Feels, Post-Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Pre-Star Wars: Rebels, so many feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7257565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrantmoves/pseuds/tyrantmoves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve hated you for so long. All these years and I thought ...” </p><p>Rex and Ahsoka reunite, years after Order 66.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our own private wars

**Author's Note:**

> Just hammering stuff out now to work through a writer's block.
> 
> It's a little too sentimental and emotional for my usual writing ... meh. Constructive criticism welcome.

“Good haul for the night,” the Rodian house manager remarks as she peels tattered bills from her roll. Ahsoka hands him two clean hundreds, enough to pay for renting the stage for the night, and gives him a clipped nod. Two hundred was a hefty price to pay, she thinks, but she also knows that this is the only strip joint in town that brings in clientele with more credits than food stamps. 

Besides, she has another three hundred credits in tips to take home. Swinging her cloak over her, she flips the lid of her satchel over the bright colours and sequins of her stage outfit. Ahsoka can’t keep a sardonic smile from her lips, thinking what Ventress would say if she saw the way Ahsoka could work a pole now -- she’d come a long way from her initial lessons in the art of feminine wiles from the Dathomirian witch. 

_ Darling, I’d rather be a Dathomirian witch than a Togrutan kitten ...  _ She can almost hear Ventress purr in her ear as Ahsoka makes her way to the back of the club.  _ People want to fuck both but at least with me, it’s because they’re afraid. It’s thrilling.  _

_ Oh yeah?  _ Ahsoka replies in her head, amused.

_ Of course, dear. People want to fuck Togrutans because they think you’ll be scared of them. Trouble, love. That’s nothing but trouble when you’re cleaning their blood up off the floor.  _

Things had always gotten dark fast with Ventress, even if she’d left the Sith behind years ago. Maybe that’s why she’d liked her. 

It doesn’t matter anymore, anyways: Asajj was back in the light, back with the Force. Ahsoka knows that she shouldn't be this bitter anymore, she should have made her peace with Ventress’s death by now, but she shoulders the fire exit door harder than necessary all the same.

It’s pouring rain outside and Ahsoka tucks her head back into the cloak deeper.  _ Great _ .

“Of all the places,” a voice -- a human voice, a male voice, a voice that Ahsoka would never, ever forget because she’d heard it from hundreds of thousands of men before -- “Never thought I’d find you --”

She’s whips around so fast, she’s got him in a Force choke before he can even finish his sentence. “You’d show your fucking face around here?” she seethes, even angrier now. “Around  _ me _ ?”

“Reckless,” he rasps, clawing fruitlessly at this throat. The rain seems to pick up speed, pounding on the pavement and drowning out his voice. “Anyone could have ... seen ...” He’s struggling to speak now, going paler even in the dim light of neon signs scattered through the alley. A steady stream of people in dark jackets scurrying down streets passes over the alleys entrances but no one stops to pay attention, to explore deeper in this rotten town on a soured planet. 

“I know that,” she spits out at him, tightening the grip, feeling the Force surging through her veins like an injected high. “But it doesn’t seem right to finish you off any other way, you  _ treacherous _ ,  _ murderous  _ piece of --”

“It wasn’t me!” Rex gasps and Ahsoka loosens her grip the smallest amount, waiting. “ I didn’t kill him. I ... Let me explain!” It would be more satisfying after he’d all but confessed with flimsy excuses, she reminds herself. “Fives figured out what was happening before Order 66, I swear. You know I wouldn’t!”

Ahsoka debates; he might be a son of a bitch, but she could still take him, anyday, she decides. She drops him from her grip and he clumps on the ground. “You have one minute to explain yourself.”

“One minute?” He’s rubbing his throat, his voice a croak. “That’s ... how long it’ll take to feel my vocal chords again, kid.”

_ Kid _ . 

_ Snips.  _

_... Skyguy.  _

Each word comes clanging in after the other like a succession of ear-splitting bells from a long deserted temple.

She charges her power, feeling it flow to her hands and blasts him off his feet so hard that he hits the brick wall of the building, landing in bags of trash. “I am not a  _ kid _ anymore, Rex.”

Rex groans and shakes his head. Opening his eyes, he studies her. She sees that there is less warmth in his eyes now than she remembered, less joviality. She hates that it makes her sad. “No. I could see that much from your little dance number in there.”

The sadness creeps in like a frost, enough that she comes closer to him. Still wary, she hunkers down and offers him her hand. “Pretty quick to judge for a guy that lurks in alleys for strippers coming off a gig.”

“I’ve changed too, Ahsoka,” Rex says quietly, accepting her hand and pulling himself to his feet. “Fives found out about the control chips -- the  _ preventative measures  _ \-- before the Chancellor could activate the order. Some of us had them removed in time.” Ahsoka had always liked Fives, with his clever quips and ceaselessly optimistic attitude. Anger, wonderful, hot, relieving anger comes back.

“He was always sharper than you,” Ahsoka replies harshly and Rex winces. Good: she can’t help but feel satisfied. “I’m not surprised he figured it out first. Where is he?”

Rex balls up his fists and looks away. He’s grown in his blond hair, she notices, and it’s slick with rain. 

“Fives is dead.” 

It’s a like someone ripped her stomach out and put a lead bowl in it’s place. No no no not Fives not -- she should have been there she could have --

Ahsoka feels herself sinking from the inside --  _ how does this hurt so much? _ Wasn’t there an upper limit to pain -- wasn’t there some sort of time threshold where things stopped mattering?

“Too bad,” she tries to sound aloof but the words warble in her mouth and she really means them. Fives, she thinks again, shamefully feeling tears well in her eyes. She squeezes them shut. He’d been the only clone from the 501st that had reached out to her after the carnage on Umbara. He had believed her when she said how sorry she was for everything that happened.

“I know,” he starts. “I -- ”

“Why didn’t you do something?” she demands, backing away from Rex. His brown eyes widen and he looks like he took a punch deeper than anything she’d done to him with the Force.

“I,” he begins tersely. “I  _ tried _ . He --”

“Right,” Ahsoka cuts in. “Right, tried. Just like you tried with Anakin, huh?”

Rex moves between them, stepping over shattered glass from rancid smelling bottles. He’s wearing a leather jacket and he pulls the hood up. Instinctively she cringes away, her hand moving to her the blaster on her hip. “Stay the fuck away from me, Rex.”

“I told you,” Rex almost pleads, helpless sounding. “I didn’t kill him, Ahsoka.”

“Then where the fuck have you been?” The question rips out of her mouth and she’s so, so stupid for even letting it come out. “Fuck, nevermind,” she says quickly, lowering her hand from her gun. Breathe in, breathe out.

“No,” Rex is close to her now but not touching her. He looks so strange, without his hard grey armour and his Mandalorian guns. She sees only a jagged blade strapped to his thigh and the leather sling of a holster running under his armpit. Enough for a bad bar fight but not enough for a war. “You’re right. I should have looked for you.”

She shoves her hands into the pockets of her cloak so that she can hunch over, falling deeper into the fabric. The hood hangs so low she can’t even see his face; a relief. She argues bitterly, “I’d probably have killed you instantly if you’d looked for me: forget it.”

“Ahsoka, can I ...” He finishes the question by slowly bringing his hands to grip her shoulders. She doesn’t stop him. Holy fuck, it’s like she’s sixteen again and she just disobeyed an order, and Anakin’s reamed into her and Captain Rex is consoling her and ... Instead of pulling away she scrunches up smaller if possible, trying to retreat inward and away from his nostalgia-conducting hands. “You’re shaking,” he says quietly.

“Duh, it’s cold,” she tries to snap, voice trembling too now. Her cloak is soaked through now but she hasn’t even noticed; it’s like the whole world fell away and there’s a terrible, humiliating spotlight on the two of them that she’d give anything to crawl away from.

“I didn’t come looking for you,” he starts quietly. “Because ... I didn’t kill Skywalker. But I ...” His voice is shaking too now and it terrifies Ahsoka, to know he’s letting her see a vulnerability that he would have protected her from almost a decade ago. “I might as well have, you know? I couldn’t damn well save him. I’m sorry.” The last two words he chokes out. “I’m sorry, Ahsoka. I couldn’t face you. What ...” He has to stop, catch his breath, and Ahsoka feels hers catch in her throat. “What would I have told you? I couldn’t ...”

And he can’t because he’s crying now, not loudly or bawling, just gasping and Ahsoka can feel his emotions pressing against her like palms pounding on a glass window. She’s kept a barrier between her and the Force for so long, she had forgotten how much  _ more  _ Jedi felt, how much more aggressively they were shoved into the currents of other’s feelings. Rex’s emotions pound on her and she tries to pull away, yanking herself free and backed against another brick wall. 

Above her, rain hits metal fire escape railings and clangs noisily. She's just glad it covers the sound of her sniffling.

“I hated you,” she grinds out, almost to herself.  “I ...” She can feel those loathsome, salty tears forming again and blinks them back. Swallows. “I’ve hated you for so long. All these years and I thought ...” Her own horrible, wrenching sob escapes and she feels her nasal plug up but she still blinks the tears back. Rex curls away from her too, like he’s ready for her to strike him. “I thought you were the one that ... after everything Anakin did for you ...”

“I know,” he interrupts her, head bowed. “I loved him like any of my brothers.

She closes her eyes, keeps breathing. Keeps a sturdy damn on the tears. Biting her lip, keeping it from trembling, she manages: “ _ Why _ ?” The question is childish and shrill when it comes out, like a whimper from some beaten, ugly thing. “What happened ... why did he ...”

“He’s just ...  ” Rex hesitates. “He’s just ...” The pain in his voice is physical. “He’s gone. He’s not ever coming back -- I’m so sorry --”

She doesn’t let the barrier down, doesn’t give into the tsunami of emotions that will happen if she truly lets herself connect with the Force again, but a different wall breaks and she begs, “Stop! Stop, okay? I can’t ... I don’t want to talk about this ... I just ...” She angrily wipes the tears from her cheeks before they can fall. “What do you want, Rex? Why look for me now?”

He looks up to meet her eyes and doesn’t say anything for a long time. In the time that lapses, it’s like someone actually reached into his skull with a lighter, because a fire starts to burn in his eyes. “It’s not over, Ahsoka. There’s still a fight. They didn’t have to die for nothing: my brothers, or the Jedi.”

“What do you mean?” she presses further, weary but concerned.

“As long as the Republic is gone, then everything we sacrificed during the war is meaningless. I won’t -- I can’t let that happen. You don’t have to either.”

“I’m done fighting wars, Rex,” Ahsoka says instantly, feeling her guard start to reassemble as she readjustings her satchel strap. “I can’t do it anymore.”

“You were made to fight wars,” he answers quietly. “You’ve just been fighting your own private one for a long time, it looks like. And alone, too.”

Ahsoka grimaces, lips curling away from her teeth, eyes still stinging with tears. 

_I know what it feels like to be used up an thrown away by your master,_ she hears Ventress hiss in her ear.  _You don't owe him anything_.

Other voices come forward though, long buried and stretching from a deep sleep.

_Are you happy, child? Your master, does he treat you well?_

_And because of you, I did survive. And not only that, I was able to lead others to survive as well._

Ahsoka finally answers: “One job, Rex. I’ll help you with one job.”


End file.
